


Progress

by ratherbeblue



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 16:05:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7514572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherbeblue/pseuds/ratherbeblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Jillian, looking directly at Erin felt like staring into the sun, something that had left her with a pretty heavy prescription for color corrective lenses as a kid. It was dangerous, and it hurt, but it was just so beautiful it made everything worth it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Progress

Jillian Holtzmann found out pretty early on that she’d never be fully appreciated for the genius she was.

She would try to impress her peers by making s’mores on the Bunsen burners and get doused with a fire extinguisher by Mr. Shultz before the marshmallow even touched the hydrocarbon enhanced flame.

She would try and build a nuclear reactor out of Cambell’s soup cans and then get Homeland security called on her when it exploded after a few hours. Apparently blowing shit up is only science if you write down the results. And isn’t that a bummer?

So higher learning just wasn’t for her, and unless she had been stopped after sneaking into a physics lecture by Dr. Gorin she probably never would have stepped foot on campus again.

Dr. Gorin had these great things called assistants, which basically meant that as long as Holtz explained herself, even at her normal mile-a-minute pace, she could do whatever she wanted without writing down a word. And she got paid for it.

Even out of school Holtz had a problem with making friends, sure people had seemed to like her well enough to ask her for the previous day’s homework assignment, or what she was writing her final about (she wasn’t), but nothing went farther than that.

Maybe that’s why she and Abby got along so well. Both of them painfully smart and even more painfully alone, Abby who only ever regarded friendship with a snort and for years had directed all her anger at the picture of a girl in the back of her own book, and Holtzmann who spent her entire life wishing she could care about someone so much that they could hurt her like that.

They worked together as well as possible, and the ghost thing ended up working for Holtz pretty well.

Holtz would come in to the new lab she had forged her way into being qualified for at 5am and blast 80s synth until 8 when Abby would walk in. They mostly worked in silence unless they were on the verge of discovery, huddled around a computer, or getting crumbs on the carpet of an old hotel advertising itself as ‘haunted’.

In her head Abby was her best friend, though she’d rather eat a vat of ectoplasm than tell her out loud.

Abby was her friend, and that was a step in the right direction for Holtz on her mission to find love. Since her experiences at coffee shops during her college stalking days had yielded no results she decided a bar would be more appropriate.

And although the grimy pickup lines she learned from movies didn’t make ladies fall to her feet they did do something arguably better, made them laugh. Women would laugh at her odd way of dressing and impossible to track train of thought. Her palpable awkwardness as she spewed clichés at them somehow translated into loveable irony and that would be enough to get her into a cab, or to an apartment, or even into a bathroom stall with them.

Women found her charming, and quirky. Adjectives that made her just enough for a night or two, but not quite enough for breakfast the next morning. That was fine though, Jillian told herself, she found set meal times barbaric anyway.

When Erin walked into the lab Holtzmann knew she would probably never see her again. She recognized her immediately as the girl from the book and turned up the charm as high as possible. It didn’t work, yet.

When they were in the cab, rushing towards a, hopefully, haunted mansion Jillian noticed a lot about Erin.

Her straight, perfect, hair smelled like one of those expensive fruity shampoos, she sat rigidly in the middle seat as if she was mentally regretting the entire situation, and her outfit looked like it belonged to a cartoon detective.

She was entirely too put together and Holtzmann wanted nothing more than to pull her apart.

Later, though the fact that she had spent more than two hours with Erin was probably throwing a wrench in her plan, and not the good kind.

From many years of experimentation, she had learned that the charm it took to get a woman in bed with her had a very limited window from the moment she meets them. The most optimal window was between 10 and 30 minutes, but she had made great success in less. The more time she spent near Erin the smaller the chance of ever being with her got.

By the time the three of them, and Patty, the new addition, had saved the world the thought of being with Erin wasn’t something she wished to entertain. Her mind had started working against her again and instead of thoughts of heated kisses and ripped off buttons, things like holding hands and cooking together in their own kitchen had taken root. Things Jillian hadn’t thought of her entire life.

She bit the inside of her cheek when she said the words true love out loud and willed herself not to look Erin in the eye. She could feel her words shaking and even though she hated that she couldn’t stop. It was a miracle she got through it without crying.

Over the next few days she caught herself watching Erin. Nothing more, just watching, remembering how she had felt like an exotic male bird while she danced to DeBarge for her, wondering what would happen if she asked her to dance again.

For Jillian, looking directly at Erin felt like staring into the sun, something that had left her with a pretty heavy prescription for color corrective lenses as a kid. It was dangerous, and it hurt, but it was just so beautiful it made everything worth it.

Erin would smile in a way that was probably meant to be nothing more than polite, or she would grab her arm in encouragement and Holtz knew she was a goner.

The thing about Holtz is she has a bit of an impulse problem, nothing huge, just something that makes her destroy other people’s bass guitars, and eat an entire cake alone in her room at 3am, and kiss Erin while she’s trying to give her tips about the propulsion on the new gun she’s building.

So that’s what she did.

And Erin kissed back.

In the morning Erin was still there, she was turned slightly away, her hair fanned out on the pillow, but clearly at peace. She wasn’t sleeping lightly so she could get rid of Jillian as soon as possible, and she wasn’t already out the door, plotting how to act normally around her the next day in the lab. This was new.

Holtz tried not to just sit and watch her sleep, but all of her attention was already focused on just that. Her brain picking apart the pieces of information she learned last night, and taking in new things she only noticed in the diffused light of morning.

The freckles on the side of her neck and the way her capable hands looked fragile when they were curled around nothing but air. The soft skin on the small of her back and

Her body was such a work of art it made her wish she had snuck into more anatomy lectures.

She didn’t know where anything would take them, but when Erin woke up and pulled her down for what was probably a disgusting kiss she didn’t care. In science this is what she would call progress.


End file.
